Therapy
The light filtered through the drawn blinds in long beams, etching patterns of shadows and light on the mahogany desk and the leather sofas scattered about the room. Doctor Samuel Jenkins' office and therapy room seemed to fulfill every clichéd characteristic of a psychologist's inner sanctum that had ever been conceived of by the human race. Rose Tyler hated every wooden sculpture, book, and plush cushion inside of it. To her, it represented everything that she had lost. It was an obvious reflection of what she feared most; that the Doctor was nothing but a dream.
"Rose, do you know where you are?" Doctor Jenkins asked in an almost hypnotic tone of voice.
She looked at the balding man with contempt in her eyes, "Of course I do. We're on Earth, London, 2005. I believe you said this place was called Belleview Asylum."
"Do you know why you're here?" Jenkins continued, repeating the same questions that he had asked for the past ten days.
"You think that I'm a nutter even though I'm not," Rose shrugged, determined that this time she would not listen to him. This time, she would not allow him to plant another seed of doubt within her mind. The Doctor was real. He had to be real.
"Rose, you're not a nutter..." he began.
"Oh, I'm not?" Rose smiled sweetly, "Can I go home then?"
"You're merely confused," Jenkins completed his thought as if she had never spoken, "Severe trauma, such as what you suffered in the Henriks explosion, can cause the human mind to try to cope in a variety of ways. You merely chose to represent your inner anguish by creating these labels of 'Doctor' and 'Jack.' Your adventures, if you will, are reflections of those things that you wish that could have in your real life."
"I have those things in real life. I have the Doctor, Jack, the TARDIS, and all of my travels. That is real life, Doctor Jenkins. You cannot convince me that they're not real. You remember the Autons. They're the reason the Doctor destroyed Henriks. He had to stop the transmitter!" Rose felt as if she was fighting to justify herself and she did not like that emotion at all.
Jenkins sighed as he pulled a folder from the top of his desk and slid its contents towards her, "Look at those, Rose. They're pictures of the locations you had described to me during our earlier conversations. As you can see, there is no entrance below the Eye to some sort of subterranean shelter for a plastic creature. There was no 'alien landing' here in London. Big Ben still stands as tall and proud as it always has. I'm sorry, Rose, but you have to recognize the truth. You have to accept reality."
"No," Rose whispered, tears forming in her eyes, "You're wrong. He's real. I know he's real."
"How do you know that for certain, Rose? If you can tell me that..."
She had no answer beyond, "Because I'd feel it in here, okay?" She tapped her chest just over her heart.
"You're in love with a fantasy, Rose. The sooner you accept that, the sooner you'll be able to go home."
"Home is a blue police box," she insisted, "Not my Mum's flat."
"I see that we still have quite a bit of work to do," Jenkins took off his glasses and rubbed them clean with a handkerchief to hide his sigh.